


darling boy

by heartofsteel



Category: Dimension 20, Fantasy High
Genre: Acceptance, Ballet, Coming Out, Eating Disorders (discussed), I DANCE NOW, Now with a chapter two, The inherent trauma that comes with being a former ballerina, Transitioning, mention of transphobia, trans!fabian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofsteel/pseuds/heartofsteel
Summary: He’s not being killed, although there is the possibility that Bill might crack a few ribs with his hug. Bill pulls back and surveys Fabian’s face closely. “I love you more than the moon and stars, lad; there’s not a thing in this world you could do or be for that to end.”
Comments: 12
Kudos: 134





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> and that's on projecting luv

“I’m a boy,” Fabian says quietly. He stands at the end of the long breakfast table in Seacaster Manor and stares miserably down at the plate of eggs and kippers before him. He can barely peek up at his parents to see their reaction. 

Bill stands heavily, his belt and boots clanking. Fabian looks up to see him draw a knife from his belt as he stalks up the room to Fabian. Fabian steels himself and hopes his Papa will at least be quick about it. 

The knife flashes through the air like quicksilver and Fabian’s ponytail drops to the floor behind him. Bill sweeps him into a tight hug. “My _darling boy,”_ he roars. There’s a warm rush in Fabian’s chest as his brain catches up. He’s not being killed, although there is the possibility that Bill might crack a few ribs with his hug. Bill pulls back and surveys Fabian’s face closely. “I love you more than the moon and stars, lad; there’s not a thing in this world you could do or be for that to end.” 

Hallariel has joined them and she presses kisses to Fabian’s cheeks, tucks his now-short hair behind an ear. “Is there a name yet?” 

“Fabian,” he says. This is going far better than he dared dream. He stands a little taller and meets their eyes. “Fabian Aramais Seacaster.” 

Bill grins at him, all gold teeth on display. “Fabian. My darling baby boy.” Fabian has never felt so warm and he’s so close to crying but also somehow smiling ear to ear. 

Hallariel surveys him clinically. “You’ll need a proper haircut, Fabian darling,” she says, tucks the same messy clump of hair back out of his face, strokes her thumb over his face. “Some new clothes, too, and we’ll get you some binder options. Are we telling people? The staff will need to know, for certain.” He just nods dumbly and she calls for Cathilda to bring the car around to take them to the family tailor. 

//

There's an incident at boarding school his freshman year that ends with four people in the infirmary, including the headmaster when Bill and Hallariel get their hands on him. Fabian ends up taking the rest of the year off and stays home training with Harzon. He gets to start taking hormones at home, which is nice. Nobody to stare at all the hair that's sprouting everywhere or hear how his voice cracks miserably in his throat as his body starts to change. It's like a second puberty and Fabian nearly considers himself lucky that nobody has to see him like this. (The only exception is when he sees the fine scar on the outside of his bicep in the mirror.)

Being on T means he puts on muscle like crazy, just gets really beefy as he counts down the days of summer before he's set to enroll at Aguefort Adventuring Academy, repeating his freshman year. His father bellows about the BloodRush team and Hallariel schedules an appointment to see about his getting some corrective surgeries. Dr. Asha is very kind and sympathetic, but insists that Fabian will need to wait another year or so to be sure he's done growing and to let his body finish adapting to the hormones. They schedule a follow-up for the summer before his sophomore year and Fabian marks it on every calendar in the house. 

He gets to Aguefort and either nobody knows or nobody cares or nobody can tell and it's such a fucking relief. Fabian knows he's being rude to the other students in detention with him but he'd rather keep them all at arm's length. Letting people get close to him simply did not go well last time. They all decide that he's being ridiculous and drag him along on their adventures anyways. It's nice. To have friends. Real friends. They keep getting in and out of shit which should suck except it gets Fabian a sick motorcycle (every time The Hangman calls him _master_ a little thrill runs up his spine). _The Bad Kids_ (god what a name) come to Seacaster Manor and they're all so _taken_ with Papa and Fabian plays up how embarrassed he is but really he's just. Thrilled to have them. 

// 

He's been on T for so long that he doesn't even register what's happening when he gets his period out of nowhere. Just. One last fuck-you from the ole uterus. They warned him it might happen as a side effect of the magic used in his top surgery, that his hormones were going to go on an absolute bender for a few weeks. He just. Didn't fucking expect _this_. 

It's hell. It's hell to be in his own body which feels better and more right than it ever has before and for it to betray him like this. He curls up on the bathroom floor of his ensuite and cries into the bathmat for a really long time. Cathilda finds him there when he doesn't show for dinner. She sits beside him and pulls him into her lap like she used to when he was a little boy. 

The days slip by in a haze. He skips three days of school and his crystal is full of messages that he doesn't answer because what the fuck is he supposed to say. It's not like he's out to any of them. He has cramps and can barely eat, just wallows in bed watching _The Real Housewives of Bastion City_. The biggest injustice of it all is that he doesn't even get to enjoy his nice new flat chest. 

Adaine comes to visit on Saturday. She shoves her way past the household staff and barges right into his room. "Fabian!" She jumps on his bed next to him and he winces as it jostles him. "Fuck, dude, are you sick?" Adaine puts a hand to his forehead, clicks her tongue. "Should we call Kristen to get you healed up?" 

" _No_ ," Fabian says, smacks her hand away. "I'm fine. What do you want." 

"Oh _no,_ " Adaine says coolly, pokes him in the chest with every word. "You don't get to be snippy at me after you've ignored all our texts for four days now! What the hell is going _on_ , Fabian?" 

Something in him just. Snaps a little. She's all in his space and his head already hurt and he just - "I'm on my period. Fuck _off_ Adaine." 

Her face does something complicated, confusion and revulsion and surprise all fighting in her eyebrows. "Oh for fuck's sake Fabian," she says and her voice is. Well, he expected her to be all saccharine and sickly but it's not, she just sounds. Normal. Fuck. "That's shit." She pulls a heating pack out of her denim jacket and offers it to him. "Heat pack?" 

"Don't you have anything else to say?" He asks, a little meanly. Fabian almost wants a fight, wants them to be predictable. Wants it to just be over before he gets any deeper. 

"Move over," Adaine says with a roll of her eyes, shoves lightly at his shoulder a she scoots up to sit beside him. "Is this season six? Have Kethriel and Allison fought at the fashion show yet?" 


	2. everything was beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fabian danced, once, ballet and lyrical at Miss Amelia's Dance Academy downtown. Long years of Cathilda driving him to class after school, of taped blisters, of standing in line with the girls while they waited for their studio slot. Tights, leotards, buns, hairspray, lipstick, looking in the mirror before recitals and feeling sick to his stomach. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for discussion of eating disorders (not applied to any canon characters) + some slightly unkind but in character thoughts about eating disorders by a main character. 
> 
> He :) dances :) now :)))

Fabian danced, once, ballet and lyrical at  _ Miss Amelia's Dance Academy _ downtown. Long years of Cathilda driving him to class after school, of taped blisters, of standing in line with the girls while they waited for their studio slot. Tights, leotards, buns, hairspray, lipstick, looking in the mirror before recitals and feeling sick to his stomach. 

He quits in seventh grade because his teacher is sick of him not looking at himself in the wall-to-wall mirrors, sick of poor posture and sloppy turns when he won't spot himself, and he is sick of being told off. There's a whispered conversation in front of him with Cathilda about  _ body image _ and  _ eating disorders _ and  _ for the best in the long run _ at the end of that season and that's the end of it. Fabian's body feels like a riot and a crumbling ruin and he won't look at it because he cannot bear to watch the sight of it moving, like a puppet keyed to his brain, not because he wants to eat ice cubes and celery for every meal. 

Cathilda squeezes his arm when they get into the car that day. "We both know you quit because you wanted to, and not because Amelia is projecting all the issues her favorite girls have onto you." Fabian's nearly too startled to speak, because how could Cathilda know about Ryan and Megumi and the jar of ipecac syrup that lives in the bottom of Ryan's dance bag. She meets his eyes in the rearview mirror and Fabian's never quite noticed how tired Cathilda looks sometimes. "I've talked to their mothers, but of course no parent wants to see it when their child is hurting." Fabian thinks of all the nights he's cried after class in the past year and how neither Bill nor Hallariel said a word about his puffy face at dinner. "I'll be sure to tell your parents it was your idea to be done." 

He simply nods, stunned, and looks out the window so when a few tears slide down his face he can pretend that she can't see him and that he's in a dramatic movie.

Fabian dances again when he is seventeen. He strips off his shirt and wields a sheet of his ancestors and lets his body move as it will. There are no mirrors in Kai Lumenera, no counts of eight and three, no lines taped on the forest floor to move between. The sheet whips like silken wind about him and he spins in and out of old forms and new ones he invents on the spot. Sometimes he's graceful, sometimes he stumbles, but he always keeps moving, eyes closed more often than open. The starshine beats upon his brow and the breeze in the trees carries distant lute music and the rustle of leaves to his ears and through his blood.

_This_ is magic. Not the arcane power that trickles from Adaine or the rippling aura Kristen carries, but something truer and deeper than any mortal force. This is his body and even as he stumbles when he leaps, thighs so unused to a jete that they buckle, it is still a revelation. His skin is cool and flushed with sweat and dew even as his heart races as he moves between the trees. This is what it is to be alive once again.

He dances again, and again, night after night in this body that is his now. Fabian buys a studio space, no mirrors, just a big open room with a bar on one wall and shiny hardwood floors. He buys dance shoes but mostly just works in toe underwear because it gives him the best range of expressiveness.

Homecoming comes around and he takes Adaine because someone said something nasty about her. Beating the shit out of the guy was one thing, showing up to the dance with her glittering on his arm is the cherry on top for destroying anyone who might still be stupid enough to say anything. The Abernants made her take ballroom classes as a child, some archaic holdover from the Court of Stars, and they cut up the dance floor. Riz gets this gorgeous photo of them while he's covering the dance for the yearbook, of Adaine in her red dress swung up in Fabian's arms, looking down on him. They're both grinning and Fabian's ass looks great in his suit pants in the photo and he makes it his lock screen for a long time. 

He teaches Kristen a very basic waltz and her Dex might improve just a little bit under his tutelage. She's fun to dance with because Kristen doesn't give one single shit about stylistic conventions and even when they waltz she ends up sort of...freestyling? As much as one can freestyle in a waltz. It's fun and he always ends up dizzy as they spin each other around and he teaches her how to do armovers and crossing. 

Gorgug is difficult to convince, not even when Fabian starts expounding on the importance of footwork for BloodRush. Fabian ultimately gives up on him, but it's okay because Zelda is a literal battle dancer and he has so much to learn from her that they all end up spending time in his studio space together anyways. He learns to weave knives into the coiled depths of his sheet, to tug advantages from skilled sweeps of the leg. 

Fig doesn't dance, because Fig did ballet too, before cheer, and he knows it reminds her too much of what her life was like before her horns came in. 

Riz is easy to persuade, but Riz is a terrible dancer. He won't let go of the tension in his shoulders and hands, doesn't have any sense of rhythm, is so caught up in his own awkwardness with his body that he can't forgive himself the natural motion of it. Fabian gets that, sort of, just differently, which is why it still makes him want to shake Riz until he finally loosens up. But Riz keeps coming back, and sometimes he doesn't dance, just sits in the corner and does work on his laptop while Fabian moves and sometimes he picks the songs for Fabian and sometimes he dances, awkwardly and full of stiff wire joints. He never fully relaxes into the motion, but his technique does improve, and Fabian can see where he'll grow into himself and move with the gentle grace he only even sees on Riz in combat. 


End file.
